Social Accounting in the Context of Profound Political, Social and Economic Crisis
The Case of the Arab Spring
Al Mahameed, Muhammad; Belal, Ataur; Gebreiter, Florian; Lowe, Alan
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Accepted author manuscript
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Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal
DOI:
10.1108/AAAJ-08-2019-4129
Publication date:
2021
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Al Mahameed, M., Belal, A., Gebreiter, F., & Lowe, A. (2021). Social Accounting in the Context of Profound Political, Social and Economic Crisis: The Case of the Arab Spring. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 34(5), 1080-1108. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2019-4129
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Download date: 06. Nov. 2022
Cite as follows: Al Mahameed M, Belal A, Gebreiter F & Lowe A (2020). Social accounting in the context of profound political, social and economic crisis: the case of the Arab Spring. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, (ahead-of- print). https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2019-4129
Social accounting in the context of profound political, social and economic crisis: the case of the Arab Spring
Muhammad Al Mahameed
Department of Operations Management, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark
Ataur Belal [a.r.belal@sheffield.ac.uk]
Sheffield University Management School, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Florian Gebreiter
Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, and
Alan Lowe
RMIT Business and Human Rights Centre, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge cooperation extended by the participants of this study. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the CSEAR, UK Conference, St Andrews, August, 2017; IPA Conference, Edinburgh, 2018 and APIRA Conference, Auckland, July, 2019. Thanks to the participants for their comments on the paper. The authors also would like to thank the reviewers of this paper for their helpful comments. Usual disclaimer applies.
Abstract
Purpose –This paper explores how social accounting operates in the context of profound political, social and economic crises. Specifically, it examines how companies constructed strategies of action to produce and organise social accounting practices under different socio-political and economic contexts prior to and after the Arab Spring.
Design/methodology/approach –The paper draws on Swidler’s theory of “Culture Toolkit” and 43 semi-structured interviews with 17 firms and their stakeholders in the Arab region.
Findings –The study argues that context influences social accounting practices by shaping a cultural toolkit of habits, skills and styles from which companies develop their social accounting related strategies of action. During “settled” periods, companies draw on resources to develop their social accounting practices whilst they seek knowledge and feedback on boundaries and expectations of the socio-political and economic contexts. During “unsettled” periods, companies begin to adopt highly organised meaning systems (i.e. ideologies) from which new ways and methods of social accounting practices are deployed.
Originality/value –The paper contributes to the extant literature by providing insights into social accounting practices in the under-explored context of the profound political, social and economic crises that followed the Arab Spring. In addition, we introduce Swidler’s Culture Toolkit theory to the accounting literature.
Keywords Arab Spring, Context, Culture toolkit, Social accounting, Crisis Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Prior research on social accounting was mostly carried out in the context of developed countries, which have experienced a relatively stable socio-political environment (see for e.g.
Gray et al., 1995; Deegan, 2017; Beattie, 2014). Within such research contexts, organisations and industries might have encountered a degree of disruption, but the wider political, social and economic environments of most of these countries have remained relatively stable since the Second World War. Such political and social stability is less often the case in developing countries, which have been more prone to revolution, civil war and other types of profound political and social crises. Whilst social accounting research has been conducted in developing countries that exhibit somewhat unstable environments (see for e.g. Belal and Owen, 2015; Kamla, 2007; Belal et al., 2013), little is known about how social accounting operates in the context of profound political, social and economic crises.
We address this issue by exploring how social accounting changed in the period prior to and after the Arab Spring. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the Arab Spring was “a process or period of political or cultural liberalization in the Arab world ... a series of anti-government or pro-democratic uprisings and demonstrations in various countries in North Africa and the Middle East, beginning in Tunisia in December 2010” (OED, 2019). This event has changed political regimes to various extents in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, leading to political and economic transitions and changes in public sentiment (WEF, 2016).
The Arab Spring, thus changed institutions, contexts and other forms of socioeconomic structures in the MENA region (Malik and Awadallah, 2013). Our specific research question
is “how did Arab companies construct strategies of action to produce and organise social accounting practices prior to and after the Arab Spring?”
Drawing on Swidler’s (1986) Culture Toolkit theory (CTT), we conceptualise social accounting as strategies of action. Originating from sociology, Swidler’s theory has been employed by a range of studies to comprehend corporate behaviours and decision-making processes (e.g. Fine and Hallett, 2014; Leonardi, 2011). In this paper, we explore how culture can play different roles in influencing and shaping strategies of action in the settled period prior to the Arab Spring, and the unsettled period after the Arab Spring. We find these concepts beneficial in clarifying the tacit nature of the complex relationships between the companies and their stakeholders and the role social accounting plays in revealing or obscuring those relationships.
This study includes 17 Arab companies and their stakeholders via 43 semi-structured interviews. The companies comprise a sample located in four countries in the MENA region:
Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Morocco. These countries and their people have a strong, shared sense of culture and history, which is influenced by the region’s complex socio-political landscape. Following the Arab Spring, companies in the region embarked on a process of justifying their existence after a key political and economic stakeholder disappeared from their corporate management and ownership structures (i.e. the political and economic connections with the previous state regimes) (Diwan et al., 2013). The context within which social accounting was practised underwent a profound transformation, which included changes in key stakeholder relationships (e.g. with governments, head of states and NGOs) and their power and influence in society (Malik and Awadallah, 2013).
Our study provides both empirical and theoretical contributions. The principal contribution of this study lies in the examination of a rich empirical site –the Arab Spring and its associated unstable context. We respond to the call for contextual studies (see Tilt, 2016, 2018) by examining an under-researched but empirically rich context. Prior social accounting studies (see for example Gray et al., 1995; Deegan, 2017; Beattie, 2014) were conducted in a relatively stable context. Our examination of the Arab Spring context, which went through significant socio-political crises, has enabled us to report some new empirical findings which includes, inter alia, social accounting practices to be led by a bottom-up approach in post- Arab Spring with “emancipatory” potential (Osman et al., 2020). Under such circumstances, social disclosures are perceived as either irrelevant due to broken trust in the companies, or inappropriate, having negative impacts on the companies due to being out of line with the contextual changes taking place. We argue that these findings are quite unique to the context under examination. They stand in contrast with the previous findings in the social accounting literature (see for e.g. Campbell, 2000; Cho, 2009; Patten, 1992; Strand, 2013).
Theoretically, in our endeavour for understanding social accounting in the unstable context of the Arab Spring, we found Swidler useful in that it helped to shed light on the importance of context, and of linkages between culture and context, in developing our understanding of social accounting. Doing so enabled us to introduce a new theoretical framework to the social accounting literature. We thus respond to recent calls in this literature to use previously untried theories from other interdisciplinary fields (see for e.g. Thoradeniya et al., 2015;
Unerman and Chapman, 2014). Examining the development of social accounting in the profoundly unstable context of the Arab Spring allows us to explore how companies mobilise social accounting as strategies of action to produce and organise their social accounting practices under different contextual settings –pre- and post-Arab Spring. Drawing on Swidler (1986), we categorise these two periods as settled and unsettled contexts respectively. During
these two periods, we observe that in the process of constructing various strategies of action different ideologies are at play and identify different configurations in the cultural toolkit of habits, skills and styles. We also argue that the whole social accounting exercise and the related dynamics are, in turn, influenced by the surrounding social, political and economic contexts in which companies operate. Our analysis enables identification of how meaning systems (i.e. ideologies) are deployed in shaping social accounting in different contexts. We distinguished between (1) a settled period where ideologies can go underground to pervade social accounting practices and gradually blend to create “what is true”, and (2) an unsettled period in which ideologies can play more complex roles in shaping and constructing social accounting. Finally, we contribute to the wider social accounting literature through providing an understanding of how companies respond to contextual changes by configuring different cultural tools at their disposal. This understanding reveals that companies adapt to contextual heterogeneity.
In the next section, we explain the theoretical framework adopted in this study, followed by a discussion of prior research in section three. The fourth section of the paper describes the research methods adopted in this study, including data sources and data analysis methods.
The fifth section reports the key findings of this study under two broad theoretical categories –the settled and unsettled contexts of the Arab Spring. We discuss our findings in section six, and section seven provides concluding remarks as well as future research directions.
2. Using Swidler’s framework to understand social accounting under changing contexts
CTT framing is based on a broader literature in cultural sociology and contains pivotal assumptions about the extent to which culture influences action (i.e. Weberian social action) by providing widely accepted values towards which action is directed (Geertz, 1973;
Keesing, 1974; Hannerz, 1969). Swidler suggests that this relation between culture [1] and action is formed via, what she describes as, a “toolkit”. The term toolkit refers to a repertoire of habits, skills and styles (i.e. tools for solving practical problems and navigating their environment) from which one can construct “strategies of action”, which Swidler (1986) defines as “ways of ordering action through time” (p. 227).
We conceptualise social accounting as strategies of action, which comprise scaffolding for companies to create and organise different social accounting practices. For instance, companies trying to establish political and economic positions within the pre-Arab Spring regimes would associate themselves with politically connected NGOs, prestigious social programmes, and signal their loyalty and devotion to those authoritarian regimes. In such a context, certain choices made sense, whilst specific culturally shaped styles, skills and habits were seen to be advantageous. Construction of these strategies can be stimulated by ideologies and requires different configurations of the cultural toolkit depending on the context in question –settled and unsettled. Table 1 summarises and clarifies the key terms of our theoretical framing. Swidler argues that actions should be integrated into larger assemblages, calling them “strategies of action” (Swidler, 1986, p. 276). Culture and cultural structures such as socio-political and economic contexts play key roles in shaping human capacities, which are then used to construct these strategies of action. Swidler uses the term
“strategy” here in an unconventional sense, referring to a general method of producing and organising action, through which several goals can be reached [2]. Therefore, strategies of action incorporate and depend on practices, attitudes, awareness and views of the world (Swidler, 1986). Further, Swidler suggests that to examine culture’s underlying effects, the
focus should not be on the action itself but rather on the “strategies of action”, which comprise of persistent ways of organising and producing action through time. Here, Swidler sees the importance of culture’s impacts not so much in defining the final action but rather in providing the cultural/contextual components that are used to construct “strategies of action”.
This conceptualisation of culture conceives of institutions and contexts as cultural structures, which “play a key role in accounting for the systematicity of action” (Lizardo and Strand, 2010, p. 206). This view suggests that context and its socio-political and economic layers are the means through which a group of people are able to share and accept one another’s social practices and behaviours. Swidler argued that cultural influence on action differed under what she called “settled” and “unsettled” contexts. We provide detailed explanations of these two conceptual categories below.
2.1 Identifying the settled context [3]
Settled contexts orient and direct, to a higher degree, corporate practices through pre- established “strategies of action”. Those, on one hand, are constructed and operationalised by companies which are able to gain and maintain access to a required toolkit of skills, habits and styles within a socio-political and economic environment. On the other hand, the practices produced and organised via these strategies of action require a low-level of justifications to validate their compatibility with different socio-political and economic structures within the wider environment. These toolkits are maintained and refined –under such environments –from which companies can construct strategies of action that create and maintain stability and continuity. Here, culture combined with the pre-Arab Spring socio- political and economic context to simultaneously seem too fused and too detached. The latter can be exemplified in the disconnect between reporting and practice on the ground. This simultaneous fusion and detachment between culture and context can be elucidated via what Swidler called an ideology –highly organised, articulated meaning regimes (e.g. political and religious) –which can be “adapted to varied life circumstances” (Swidler, 1986, p. 281).
However, ideologies are adapted to pervade social accounting practices to enable gradual blending into coherent “assumptions about what is true” (Swidler, 1986, p. 281).
We conceive of the pre-Arab Spring period (i.e. the time-period before December 2010) as a settled context. Understanding the pre-Arab Spring as a settled context requires consideration of key aspects of the historical, socio-political and economic context of the MENA region. The region consists of postcolonial states, which acted as the principal economic players in key sectors (e.g. food, energy, housing, health and other public services) (Breisinger et al., 2011). The dominant economic structures helped facilitate and support the emergence of three distinct classes in the society: (1) the ruling elites, (2) the ruling elites’
clienteles and (3) the ordinary citizens (Haddad, 2011). This system had endured for over 50 years despite the changing political and economic ideologies of the region (socialism 1960–
1970 and neo-liberal economic reform during 1990s –Harrigan, 2011).
Swidler’s key terms
Swidler’s concepts
Operationalisation Our
definitions
Settled context Unsettled context Culture A ‘tool kit’ of
habits, skills &
styles.
(Swidler, 1986, p273).
The available set of culturally situated habits, skills & styles that companies can draw from
Here cultural influences show low coherence &
consistency.
In the unsettled context, culture provides greater coherence.
Habits, skills &
styles
Tools &
abilities, which people use “in varying configurations
to solve
different kind of problems”.
(Swidler, 1986, p273)
Available resources including tools and abilities, which
companies can use to construct their strategies of action.
Companies seek to maintain &
refine existing skills, habits and styles of acting.
E.g., refining a toolkit of corporate communication skills, social involvements habits &
political connections styles.
Companies seek to identify and adopt new skills, habits and styles.
E.g., disregarding unsuitable pre-Arab Spring styles and habits of handling and reporting charity work.
E.g., adopting new skills that are identified in the employees’
initiatives.
Strategies of action
Persistent ways of organising &
producing action over time. (Swidler, 1986)
Social accounting, which comprises scaffoldings that can be
used by
companies to create and organise social accounting practices.
Constructing strategies of action that create and maintain stability and continuity for the company.
Constructing new strategies that suit the survival of emerging ideologies around but also beyond their social accounting.
Action Weberian social action -
"an action is 'social' if the acting
individual takes account
Practices of social
accounting: for example corporate decisions on undertaking &
Implicit and weak influence of culture over action.
Explicit and strong influence of culture over action.
of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course".
(Weber, 1978)
disclosing non- economic activities, including various social
&
environmental activities.
Context Cultural structures, which play key
roles in
creating the systematicity of action (Lizardo and Strand, 2010).
Also the wider socio-political and economic environment.
This can be categorised into both settled and unsettled contexts (Swidler, 1986).
We
operationalise the pre-Arab Spring period (i.e. the time- period before December 2010) as a settled context, and post-Arab Spring as an unsettled context (i.e. the time-period from 2011 and onward).
Pre-Arab Spring: context is dominant over culture.
Post-Arab Spring:
culture dominates over context.
Ideology “Articulated, highly organized meaning systems”
(Swidler, 1986, p278)
Self-conscious, multi-layered meaning systems of corporate management (both political and religious).
It also includes political ideology of pre and post Arab Spring regimes such as neo- liberalism and socialism.
Elitist ideology, an implicit, authoritative, giving perceptions about what is true.
Leaving no room for competition from alternative ideologies.
Religious and egalitarian ideologies, these are explicit, articulated and highly organised, which encourages new strategies of action.
Allowing competitions from alternative ideologies.
Table 1: Overview of key Conceptual terms in CTT and their operationalisation in the settled and unsettled contexts
This economic regime created a weak private sector, which contributed less than 1% of the world non-fuel exports, compared to 10% in East Asia. The Arab private sector is dominated by family enterprises. Only a minority portion of their ventures has been floated on the stock markets (Diwan et al., 2013). Those private enterprises are owned and controlled by two classes of local families: (1) ordinary families who inherited their business –mainly small and medium enterprises –and managed to survive the political and economic changes and (2) influential families (e.g. Trabelsi family of Tunisia, Ahmed Ezz of Egypt and Rami Makhlouf of Syria) who owned the larger size businesses and were affiliated to the state (Haddad, 2011). Within the latter enterprises, the state-business relationship is typically one that is personalised rather than institutionalised, where the sovereigns of the state and business owners are coupled through exclusive, often familial, networks. These arrangements, therefore, are normally manifested via a shadow economy controlled by the military (Diwan et al., 2013). Nevertheless, the common characteristics of these internal Arab markets were (1) (a vital economic stake) controlled by the military and (2) subjects of interest for both economic and political powers.
2.2 Identifying the unsettled context
An unsettled context represents a “period of social transformation [that] provides simultaneously the best and worst evidence for culture’s influence on social action” (Swidler, 1986, p. 278). As pre-existing context is “taken for granted” to shape and justify the adopted action, a search for alternatives takes place in society to organise and produce new strategies of action (Swidler, 1986). In such settings, new strategies of action are established through ideology. The establishment of these ideologies is initiated by changing what used to be the quiescent contextual patterns during the settled times with crucial meanings resulting in group division and bouts of ideological groupings or re-groupings (Swidler, 1986). The unsettledness of this period stems from those unprecedented changes that occurred in the sociopolitical and economic context and began to dismantle as its supporting influential actors lost their power. In this context, we argue that learning new ways to organise social accounting was a necessity for the companies, as they engaged in practicing unfamiliar habits to become familiar (Swidler, 1986). Ideologies have powerful influences in this conceptual category, but in a restricted sense. Rather than providing the underlying assumptions of an entire way of social accounting, they make explicit demands in selected contested areas.
These restrictions stem from the fact that ideological movements such as the Arab Spring are not complete cultures, as much of their postulated understanding of the world is influenced by pre-existing cultural patterns (Swidler, 1986). The notions of culture, strategies of action, ideology, settled and unsettled context in Swidler’s framework allow us to explain how companies frame social accounting to construct different strategies of action in dealing with the contextual changes such as Arab Spring by having different configurations of cultural toolkit at their disposal for dealing with a new situation.
We conceive of the post-Arab Spring period as an unsettled context (i.e. the time-period from 2011 onwards). The dominant state and weak private sector resulted in a number of political and economic drivers that fuelled the Arab Spring to varying degrees. This led to issues of poverty, lack of education and economic growth, where the region failed to achieve an acceptable reduction in the unemployment rates and improve the living standards of ordinary citizens. The Arab world had become more educated, younger and gender gaps had decreased. In contrast, the number of people living under the poverty line in the Arab region had increased, at a time when global poverty figures were declining (Cammett et al., 2018).
Although a limited number of studies have attempted to provide an explanation for the Arab Spring movements (see for e.g. Campante and Chor, 2012 and Malik and Awadallah, 2013), two groups of studies can be distinguished in explaining the underlying circumstances that set the stage of the Arab Spring. A group using economic reasoning argued that Arab Spring movements were triggered by the failure of both government and the private sector in providing employment to the Arab population (Malik and Awadallah, 2013). Another group saw the revolutions as a call for political freedom fuelled by the absence of democracy and press freedom, in addition to the existence of corrupt Arab regimes that had spent decades in power (Campante and Chor, 2012). In this paper, we argue that Arab Spring is a conflation of all of these factors noted above.
3. Social accounting and the influence of context
There is a growing, but limited body of work in the social accounting literature, looking at various contextual elements (e.g. cultural, political, economic, religions and history) in relation to the practices of social accounting and reporting (see for example, Kamla, 2007;
Karam and Jamali, 2013; Killian and O’Regan, 2016). As noted by Tilt (2016), the contexts in which social accounting is examined become rather important to understand its predominantly voluntary nature, allowing researchers to examine the motives and processes of (de)implementing such practices. On a similar note, Jamali and Karam (2018) stated that the nuanced and multifaceted practices of social accounting are contextualised and locally formed by multi-level factors (e.g. ownership, structure, governance mission, identity and culture) and actors (e.g. governments, political elites and factions, local firms and multinational corporations) rooted within broader formal and informal governance regimes.
This body of literature, however, remains limited, as less attention has been given to the conditions and state of contexts, assuming that sociopolitical and economic environments and their components are rather static or predefined. We argue that context and its stability are dynamic in this field of study. Thus, we address how the stability and different states of the context affect social accounting by drawing on Swidler’s (1986) two cultural models that distinguish between settled and unsettled contexts, facilitating a nuanced and detailed analysis.
We position our study within this social accounting literature as an approach that looks beyond the economic interactions between organisations and society (see for e.g. Owen, 2008; Gray, 2002, 2013). Jamali and Karam (2018) highlight the significance of examining the context-dependency of social accounting practices by paying closer attention to peculiar institutional patterns and national system configurations of developing countries. Following this, our focus is on social accounting practices under the Arab Spring context. Noting the strong significance of the Arab Spring context (Karam and Jamali, 2013), we distinguish between two different periods where social accounting was practised: prior to and after the Arab Spring. We seek to understand the contextual dynamics of each period and how companies construct their strategies of action [4], in relation to social accounting.
Studies of social accounting in the MENA region have identified a number of contextual
“localised” factors which have capacity to influence social accounting practices and/or perceptions in the region (see for e.g. Kamla, 2007; Jamali and Mirshak, 2007; Kamla et al., 2012; Osman et al., 2020). The nature of these factors revolves around ideological views stemming from religious and nationalist perspectives, as well as the shared colonisation history and socio-political setting. These contextual factors either create a structurally vigorous environment, where different ways and methods can be used to practice social accounting, or leave a gap for personal discretion, hindsight and initiative to shape these
practices (Jamali and Mirshak, 2007; Kamla, 2007). Simultaneously, these dynamics paved the way for global principles and standards to remain a key influential force in shaping the wider picture of social accounting in the settled MENA region (Kamla et al., 2006). This seems to result from the desires of relatively influential decision-makers within the political and economic regimes of the region. Drawing on contextual appreciation of colonial, economic, political and cultural forces, Osman et al. (2020) highlighted the “emancipatory”
and “repressive” potentials of social accounting. However, these localised dynamics appeared to confine social accounting practices to a limited area, such as philanthropic activities, whilst the context of these developing countries is blurring wider dimensions of such practices.
Particularly, practices in social accounting such as disclosures are mobilised to portray nationalistic and religious views, guiding businesses in integrating the local Islamic and political perspectives in their planning, objectives and decisions.
The wider socio-political and economic issues were essential components in studies undertaken in the MENA region (see for e.g. Kamla et al., 2012; Karam and Jamali, 2013).
The perceptions, for example, around social accounting in the region were influenced by the development of local socio-economic and political contexts, specifically, imperialism/
colonialism, globalisation and cultural specificities (Kamla et al., 2012; Osman et al., 2020).
Karam and Jamali (2013) extended this argument to include the state of the context and its stability to argue that instability of the local context coupled with global pressures for change provides an opportunity for the private sector to mobilise practices of social accounting as a particular tool of institutional work in favour of change. Therefore, socio-political context may shape perceptions around social accounting and its practices via: (1) the localised religious teaching, which emphasises the social and environmental responsibilities, and (2) the local, political and economic regimes, which can promote, facilitate and regulate different aspects of accounting (Kamla et al., 2012). However, the [in] stability of this context may produce a ground for influencing change in social accounting practices. Karam and Jamali (2013) argued that practices can be further de-institutionalised when pressures for change accompanied by contextual instability fomented through the Arab Spring.
The effects of such relatively settled contexts, therefore, can range from shaping the nature and extent of social accounting practices, to influencing the accountants’ perceptions of such practices. Here, the multifaceted layers of the settled context can also blur particular dimensions of social accounting, whilst empowering specific individuals or groups who can (de)implement ways/methods of practicing social accounting. Although Karam and Jamali (2013) suggested that the Arab Spring (i.e. unsettled context) facilitated change at institutional levels, prior studies have not explored the practices of social accounting under such conditions of instability. We address this area in our study from Swidler’s point of view, where a conflation of cultural and contextual factors determine to what extent and how companies choose to construct different means of practising social accounting.
4. Research method
The primary research in this study involves a range of semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders from inside and outside the Arab private sectors, located in four countries in the MENA region: Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Morocco [5]. The interviewees were chosen to capture a wide range of perspectives, including those who remained outside the social accounting process, and those who were impacted only indirectly. All interviewees were offered anonymity.
We included those interviewees who were (1) senior managers, (2) involved in social accounting practices, and (3) employed in a company that operates in the Arab region and engaged in social accounting practices. Invitations were sent to those who fitted the abovementioned criteria and whose contact details could be obtained. In all, 22 senior managers were interviewed. All the interviews were conducted in Arabic language, the mother-tongue of the interviewees and the principal researcher. The majority of the interviews were conducted via Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) such as Skype and Zoom, permitting a range of features that enhanced the interactive nature of the interviews such as screen, document and text sharing and the ability to present PowerPoint slides. The interviews lasted between 45 and 135 min and, in total, just over 1740 min of corporate interviews were collated. Further information regarding these interviews is presented in Table 2.
Table 2. Details of corporate interviewees
In order to pursue the opportunity to interact with as many stakeholders with social accounting related/Arab Spring related knowledge as possible, invitations were sent to senior staff in four types of organisations (NGOs, Media, Consultancy and Education and training) that have or had direct relations with the 17 companies we examined. They were contacted via email, social media and phone, as well as a public invitation which was posted on social media. Although over 50 people responded directly to the invitations, 21 people were
Position Industry Gender Country Date Length
(minutes) Code
Executive Officer Construction Male Egypt 12/11/16 48 ES1
Executive Officer Banking Male Egypt 09/12/16 68 ES2
Non-Executive Director
Banking Male Egypt 15/07/16 92 ES3
Executive Officer Aluminum Male Egypt 29/10/16 46 ES4
Chief Executive Officer
Insurance Female Egypt 05/06/16 50 ES5
Operating Officer Banking Male Egypt 24/05/16 109 ES6
Operating Officer Telecommunication Male Egypt 07/06/16 52 ES7
Financial Officer Logistics Male Tunisia 30/09/16 55 TS1
Executive Officer Banking Female Tunisia 13/11/16 130 TS2
Financial Officer Aviation Male Tunisia 28/05/16 103 TS3
Company Secretary Banking Male Tunisia 06/06/16 48 TS4
Non-Executive Director
Banking Female Tunisia 12/12/16 45 TS5
Company Secretary Banking Male Jordan 15/06/16 89 JS1
Operating Officer Telecommunication Male Jordan 20/07/16 115 JS2 Operating Officer Telecommunication Male Jordan 21/10/16 75 JS3
Non-Executive Director
Banking Male Jordan 28/10/16 66 JS4
Executive Officer Insurance Male Jordan 17/09/16 120 JS5 Executive Officer Logistics Male Morocco 22/09/16 70 MS1 Company Secretary Financial Female Morocco 08/11/16 63 MS2 Operating Officer Insurance Male Morocco 05/11/16 135 MS3 Financial Officer Construction Female Morocco 21/11/16 101 MS4 Executive Officer Financial Male Morocco 03/08/16 60 MS5
available for interviews and fit our abovementioned criteria. 17 of them were interviewed via VoIP and 4 via face-to-face, resulting in 1,120 min of stakeholder interviews. Further information regarding the stakeholder interviewees is presented in Table 3.
As can be seen from Tables 2 and 3, all interviews were conducted in 2016. However, all of our interviewees were experienced enough to comment on the state of affairs both pre- and post-Arab Spring. Only one interviewee was an exception because he moved to a new organisation during this period. In order to ensure factual accuracy, we have cross checked interview data with other corporate and media reports where possible.
The corporate interviews covered two major sections: first a generic section invited interviewees to talk about (1) their roles and experiences in their organisations, and (2) the post-Arab spring state of social accounting and its practices in comparison with their preArab Spring counterparts. The second section was primarily based on social accounting materials produced by the company and news articles. The stakeholder interviews were similarly structured. They contained generic and detailed sections that focused on changes in social accounting for the company in question. The interviews were originally transcribed in Arabic.
Subsequently, the entire Arabic transcripts were initially coded and analysed thematically using NVivo (Miles et al., 2013). This was then strengthened manually by several careful and close reading of the transcripts. We have only translated selected extracts from Arabic into English for the quotes reported in this paper. This has helped us in doing justice to the richness of the original Arabic data and minimised the risk of losing that richness in the process of translation (Evans, 2004; Spence et al., 2017).
Table 3. Details of stakeholder interviewees
Position Company Gender Country Date Length (minutes) Code
Director NGO Male Egypt 21/10/16 32 EC1
Business Correspondent Media Female Egypt 17/11/16 45 EC2
Professor Academic Male Egypt 23/06/16 61 EC3
Director Consultancy Male Egypt 07/10/16 31 EC4
Deputy Director NGO Female Egypt 14/05/16 33 EC5
Director Consultancy Male Tunisia 02/05/16 73 TC1
Senior Executive NGO Male Tunisia 16/05/16 35 TC2
Researcher Consultancy Male Tunisia 08/09/16 37 TC3
Business Specialist Media Female Tunisia 22/10/16 87 TC4
Professor Academic Male Tunisia 06/05/16 69 TC5
Marketing Director NGO Male Jordan 15/05/16 32 JC1
PR Director Consultancy Female Jordan 20/11/16 30 JC2
Director Consultancy Male Jordan 24/05/16 59 JC3
Researcher NGO Female Jordan 28/06/16 77 JC4
Senior Executive NGO Male Jordan 29/09/16 50 JC5
Associate Dean Academic Female Jordan 06/10/16 44 JC6
Chartered Accountant Consultancy Male Jordan 26/08/16 80 JC7
Deputy Director NGO Male Morocco 31/08/16 47 MC1
Professor Academic Female Morocco 17/10/16 42 MC2
Deputy Director NGO Male Morocco 14/10/16 90 MC3
Business Correspondent Media Female Morocco 30/10/16 67 MC4
In addition, we had an Arabic-speaking team member who conducted the interviews and was familiar with the history and culture of the Arab Spring regions. Moreover, the research team of this paper has significant experience of conducting research in non-English speaking fields.
Following O’Dwyer (2004) and Miles et al. (2013), our data analysis involved a three-step process –data reduction, data display and conclusion gathering. Broadly, we have structured the data in accordance with the theoretical categories discussed in section two of this paper.
The four strategies of action, which comprise scaffolding for companies to create and organise social accounting practices, are reported under each of the categories that emerged from the data analysis (NGOs’ partnerships, social involvements, stakeholder engagements and corporate communication). There were several iterations between telling (theorisation) and showing (display) of data before we finalised the findings reported in the next section (Golden-Biddle and Locke, 2007).
5. Findings: social accounting practices in a settled vs an unsettled context
In this section, we report findings related to the practice of social accounting prior to and subsequent to the Arab Spring. We refer to these periods as settled and unsettled contexts.
We summarise our findings in Table 4 before discussing them in detail in Sections 5.1 and 5.2.
5.1 Social accounting in a settled context
In describing this period, our focus is on identifying how the four social accounting areas:
NGO partnerships, social involvements, stakeholder engagements and corporate communication (i.e. strategies of action), of companies, were constructed during the settled period (before December 2010). In this settled period, culture as opposed to the socio- political and economic contexts can appear simultaneously too fused and too detached (Swidler, 1986). The latter situation exhibits when the socio-political and economic context does not provide clear and direct support to practise social accounting, whilst culture does (both tacit culture such as habits and styles, and explicit cultural materials such as rituals and beliefs) act in a supportive manner (Swidler, 1986).
Table 4. Social accounting practices under settled and unsettled context
A discussion with a senior manager in Tunisia about the pre-2000 period and the ways in which different areas of social accounting were constructed, highlighted the issue of the socio-political and economic context in supporting such constructions:
No one knew if exposing their social activities would be welcome, acceptable or even legal ... so whoever had engaged in these activities avoided reporting them publicly ... that was a risk no one would take ... as providing any accounts of that [social activity] was very risky ... the problem was not in having a reporting guideline but actually knowing your boundaries and the redlines (TS4, Tunisia).
The disconnection between culture and context during this period is most apparent in the disconnect between the actions around social involvements and the communication of those actions. The contrast in constructing these areas of social accounting can be explained not only by this disconnection between culture and context, but also via what Swidler called an ideology that can be “adapted to varied life circumstances” (Swidler, 1986, p. 281). Ideology needs to be adapted to bridge between discontinuous strategies of actions. The above quote of TS4 also highlighted an ideology around risk management that had been adapted to deal with the complexity of the period and the discontinuity of associated corporate communications. The adapted ideology that surrounded the construction of these two strategies of action were about a classification of risk [a risk no one would take]. This type
Social accounting practices
Illustrations of the practice
Settled Context Unsettled Context NGO partnerships Partnerships between Arab
companies and local &
global NGOs in Arab Spring countries.
Partnerships with selected NGOs based on their political connections.
Provided political boundaries & skills.
Based on efficiency &
capabilities of an NGO.
Provided social access
& mobilisation.
Social involvements Projects funded & carried out partially or fully by Arab companies, concerned with specific social issues (e.g. health, education & youth employment).
Politically & globally engaged inputs.
Steered by influential NGOs that were linked to the political elites.
Less politically, but remained globally engaged inputs.
Steered by wider societies & their necessities.
Stakeholder engagement
Process adopted to involve different stakeholder groups in shaping social accounting (e.g. design, operation &
communication).
Highly engaged with local political &
economic elite groups.
Poorly engaged with less powerful stakeholders.
Highly engaged with newly empowered stakeholders (e.g., employees) to show disconnection with previous elite groups.
Corporate communication
Spaces concerned with external communications.
Highly engaged with global guidelines
Politically influenced as to portraying loyalty
& devotion to pre Arab Spring
‘authoritarian’
regimes.
Still to some extent engaged with global guidelines.
Involved in Arab Spring
Held explicit cultural materials.
of risk (of getting caught by the surveillance regime of the authoritarian state) stemmed from uncertainty surrounding the contextual consequences of such practices [no one knew if exposing their social activities would be welcome, acceptable or seen as legal]. Under such circumstances when companies engaged in social accounting, we argue that strategies of action are constructed via a culturally-shaped toolkit consisting of skills, habits and styles. In our context, the toolkit is a set of skills of knowing what the surrounding social issues are, how companies can be involved, and how these issues can be addressed using appropriate styles (see Tables 1 and 4).
An interviewee (TS5, Tunisia) referred to a change in the context [... this started to change after 2000 when NGOs and charities began to emerge], where practising social accounting became more contextually acceptable [... things became rather easier]. The period (after 2000) was dominated by a neo-liberal ideology, where the formalisation and operation of global NGOs and charities were permitted by the head of states (Malik and Awadallah, 2013).
This change helped in overcoming the main issue that social accounting faced before 2000 [the problem was not in having a reporting guideline but actually knowing your boundaries and the redlines] (TS4, Tunisia). This reformed context began to support different areas of social accounting through the introduction of these NGOs, which had brought global skills, habits and styles (e.g. communications skills, involvements and connections styles), as well as local political connections. These contextually shaped skills, habits and styles invited an alteration of the previous toolkit. A discussion with a senior executive in an Egyptian construction company about the roles of those NGOs in developing social accounting prior to the Arab Spring, highlighted a number of interesting insights:
They [NGOs] did not just offer partnerships for the Egyptian companies regarding their social projects or even how to report that ... those NGOs had power and contacts in and outside the industry ... normally, companies would sense what was [politically] desirable and that was by following the activities of the [NGOs] (ES1, Egypt).
The advent of NGOs introduced new skills for social accounting and also changed the habits and styles of social accounting communication [providing an image of the kind of world that social accounting exists in and supports]. For example, NGOs focused on the concept of social development. These new styles of reporting became incorporated in the companies’
new toolkit as they were clearly appreciated by the business community [... those NGOs have power and contacts]. This altered toolkit began to (re)construct different aspects of social accounting (i.e. strategies of action), in particular, placing greater emphasis on social involvement and corporate communication [... companies would sense what was desirable and that was by following the activities of these organisations]. Interestingly, at this stage the culture and context become rather too fused which made disentangling their influences on how strategies of action are constructed difficult (Swidler, 1986). Ideology adapted to pervade the different areas of social accounting, in such a way, as to provide or facilitate coherent “assumptions about what is true” (Swidler, 1986, p. 281). The following quote from a senior manager in Tunisia exemplifies the disentangling of culture and context in justifying the construction of new social involvements and communication, as well as the ideology that had gone underground and become widely accepted:
Doing good is embedded within ourselves, and we are in a continuous search for new involvements that can move the society and ourselves forward ... these sometimes can be guided by organisations such as the United Nations... and the reason for this is that the bank [referring to his company] is more likely to achieve better outcomes in a harmonious society than in a broken and fragmented
one, so we have a belief that any investment in our society is a direct investment in our bank ... but we are restricted to our abilities and of course to what the system allows you to do (TS4, Tunisia).
This demonstrates a new ideological approach to the construction of social accounting that faded into the background but worked to justify “what is true”. The discussion with TS4 suggests that this new approach was influenced and shaped to different degrees by both context and culturally-shaped skills, habits and styles. Social involvements are motivated by cultural influences [... Doing good is embedded within ourselves...], whilst communication can either be shaped by the toolkit [... these sometimes can be guided by organisations such as the United Nations...], or constrained by it [... but we are restricted to our abilities and ...
to what the system allows]. In such times, these adapted and faded ideologies become more encompassing to what is true than ideologies in open competition for alternative ways of organising experiences in social accounting (Swidler, 1986). Rather, they acted as a lens through which companies can appreciate the authority of habits and normality, thus explaining specific adaptations of strategies of action. During a discussion with a Tunisian executive officer about the influence of local political and economic power on their corporate communication, the inclusion of a portrait of the previous state president was highlighted:
This was the way [referring to the inclusion of a portrait of the previous president] companies used to frame their external reports, ... if you look at other reports, corporate or non-corporate, I assure you, you would find the same framing style and the same “picture” ... I do not think these companies were forced to do so ... However, no one wanted to standout and not follow that reporting culture (TS2, Tunisia).
In such a context, there is no search for new ways of organising [... no one wanted to standout and not follow that reporting culture], but rather accepting the undisputed authority of habits and normality in organising such areas [This was the way companies used to frame their external reports]. However, it is important to highlight that neither culture nor context impose a single unified pattern to organise such social accounting, in the sense of imposing norms and styles [... I do not think these companies were forced to do so]. Instead, such sociopolitical and economic context provides a limited set of cultural resources from which companies can construct their social accounting, constraining the scope of the strategies of action via restraining the available cultural resources to construct them. This observation arose out of our discussion with an executive director of an Egyptian company about what resources were available at a local level to construct their social accounts:
We never had a localised reporting framework, although people sensed what locally were redlines not to be crossed ... thus companies, I believe, do their reporting based on global guidelines ... even social accounting specialists [hand signalled with quotation marks] borrowed more from the global practices than the local ones (ES4, Egypt).
Companies constrained in their ability to construct social accounting practices such as communications [We never had a localised reporting framework...]. At the same time, certain resources became more central in this area [... thus companies, I believe, do their reporting based on global guidelines], and became rather invested in the meaning of the practice (Swidler, 1986). Therefore, global reporting guidelines anchored the communication function that companies developed before the Arab Spring event. The effectiveness of the adopted communications strategies was related to the toolkit of skills, habits and styles that were acquired by the Arab companies and senior managers. The different areas of social accounting were not only constructed through a toolkit shaped by socio-political and economic context, but were also supported by the political and economic positions that the
company associated with. The significance of the political and economic positions of the company was highlighted through a discussion with a Jordanian senior manager who epitomised the role of the political regime:
We have dealt with a number of social and environmental issues and we know there are plenty of matters to handle, ... so we work closely with the government and follow their vision ... for us the state is not just a partner that we work with but rather a leader of the social development ... and our social accounting strategy is stemmed from the state’s vision (JS3, Jordan).
Influence of the political regime on the corporate behaviour is also evident from the following quote:
Some companies were pushed to contribute to specific projects with specific NGOs, other companies proactively tried to establish connections with these NGOs ... may be for political gains sometimes ... but at the end of the day, under the previous regime, a phone call from a person in the ruling elite is an order to adhere to (ES7, Egypt).
Constructing social accounting prior to the Arab Spring required companies to have a distinctive toolkit of skills, habits and styles that reflected their political and economic positions in order to comprehend and navigate the surrounding political, economic and societal contexts [... may be for political gains sometimes] (ES7, Egypt). For instance, companies refined localised and political reporting skills and habits. This produced authoritarian reporting styles through which pre-Arab Spring political leaders and their strategies were portrayed as offering a moral compass. This distinctive toolkit allowed some leading Arab companies to begin effectively constructing a form of social accounting (see Table 4). We found that Islam, as an ideology, became influential in shaping engagement and communication with less powerful stakeholders (e.g. communities and employees).
Some areas of social accounting remain less structured or what Swidler refers to as
“uninstitutionalised”, allowing local and cultural effects to increasingly play a significant role in partly constructing sub-areas of social accounting. Talking with a company secretary in Morocco about social involvements and the explicit cultural materials, an implementation and engagement process was highlighted:
We work in poor and deprived communities. Therefore, it is natural for us to engage in philanthropy... in such case, no consideration is given to any other aspects than principles and ethics ... in order to engage with these communities and give them helping hands (MS2, Morocco).
Constructing such sub-areas of social accounting rest on cultural assumptions of voluntary giving and philanthropy being influential within the community [... it is natural for us to engage in philanthropy]. Social involvement and stakeholder engagement persist, however, as what became the predominant and collective way of dealing with other aspects of social accounting that are not directly or indirectly taken care of by countries’ political and economic institutions.
In short, different social accounting practices (NGOs relationships, stakeholder engagements, activities and communication) prior to the Arab Spring (i.e. settled context) required a toolkit of culturally and contextually-shaped skills, habits and styles. However, existing political ties among Arab companies further facilitated or in some cases, may have constrained the use of this toolkit (Matten and Moon, 2008; Dieleman and Boddewyn, 2012). Although the pre- Arab Spring period can be characterised by “loose coupling” between culture and social accounting, culture remained essential in two areas; (1) in justifying the practices of social accounting to the company’s local stakeholders, and (2) in providing resources to deal with
unexpected issues, for improvising, in social accounting [6]. During this period, we have found that politically empowered NGOs contributed to shaping construction of the pre-Arab Spring social accounting by not only setting boundaries, but by also altering the companies’
toolkits to include new culturally sensitive skills and habits (i.e. focusing on social developments), and styles (i.e. global frameworks). These tacit and explicit cultural resources, however, were mobilised when the companies communicate and/implement social accounting practices at a local level. This was done through their loyalty and affinity with the “authoritarian” regimes.
5.2 Social accounting in an unsettled context
Everything has changed, the equation on the ground changed after 2011, “The leader’s disease” has vanished ... individuals and organisations were liberated from the hegemony of dictatorial power ...
everyone had mixed feelings towards these changes, happy to get rid of the old regime and anxious about the new one. (EC3, Egypt)
This is the picture of feelings after the Arab Spring drawn by an Egyptian academic. At this stage, significant changes took place within the Arab socio-political and economic contexts signalling a shift in political ideologies from autocracy towards a craving for democracy and plurality (Malik and Awadallah, 2013). What characterised the socio-political and economic context of the Arab region was altered after 2011 (i.e. loss/ changes in powerful individual and groups) [“[The] leader’s disease” has vanished ...]. The previous autocratic context supported, and to some extent shaped pre-Arab Spring social accounting practices. It is important to understand how Arab companies functioned in producing and organising social accounting practices after socio-political and economic disruption [... individuals and organisations were liberated from the hegemony of dictatorial power]. At the business level, such transformation seem to be perceived simultaneously with apprehension but also with welcoming attitudes [...we were prepared to work with whoever would be in power.] (TS2, Tunisia). We have also noted that companies did not immediately recognise the direct influences of these changes. Thus, the rest of this section is organised into (1) early unsettled context, and (2) late unsettled context.
Early unsettled context: maintaining the old toolkit while engaging in practices of obfuscation
The undisputed authority of habits and what was understood as normality of the previous regime and within social accounting appeared to be challenged at an early stage of the Arab Spring. Following Swidler’s assumption that there is “a continuum from ideology to tradition to common sense” (Swidler, 1986, p. 279), we argue that the pre-Arab Spring ideologies struggled to support normality during the post-Arab Spring period. Thus, pre-Arab Spring strategies of action fell short of being able to organise social accounting practices within this period of disruption. However, we noticed that there is a time gap between the dramatic changes that occurred in the socio-political and economic context, and the recognition of their influence on some social accounting practices. Interviewees provided a number of explanations for such a gap. They can be grouped into: (1) explanations around the pre-Arab Spring ties with a number of parties and (2) explanations that highlight the responsive nature of these practices. For example, an executive director of a Tunisian NGO stated the below:
Social accounting practices in many large companies have become commitments and expectations towards foreign and local stakeholders, in one way you could look at them [the practices] as agreements between two or three parties: the companies being one of them ... another thing to remember is that these practices had been institutionalised before 2010 ... it cannot be changed
